Since retiring in late 2016, each of our annual road trips have had some sort of theme that strongly influenced the broad itinerary, and to some degree tied together the field work being done that year. In 2017, the theme was grasslands; in 2018, new vascular plant families; in 2019, the western Arctic; and in […]
To the Keys
Our 2024 road trip, which may include a short summer break in El Paso, has several themes: trying to reach our goal of seeing 90% of native plant genera in the Continental U.S. and Canada (hereafter, CUSC); getting in a good dose of canoeing after a lean year in 2023; visiting Civil War battlefields from […]
Infraspecies
I am writing this blog post while camped in the Flamingo Campground in Everglades National Park, Florida. As a testament to how hot, humid, and buggy the region is at present, only six of over one hundred sites in the campground are occupied, whereas it fills to capacity in the winter. We left El Paso […]
Adventures in Bhutan and Misadventures in India
On our birding tours we often ask other participants what some of their favorite destinations have been, and a surprising number of people have named Bhutan as one of the best trips they have ever done. Factors often mentioned, in addition to the fine selection of birds, are the beautiful Himalayan scenery and the interesting […]
The Caribbean, At Last
Incredibly, neither Eileen nor I have ever been to the Caribbean. We have been saving the region as a place to explore later in life as the travel and birding are easier than many of the destinations we visit. There are three archipelagos (groups of islands), collectively known as the West Indies, within the bioregion: […]
Chile and 2023 Wrap-Up
We traveled with Field Guides, Inc. to Chile from November 9 – 30. The trip was led by Willy Perez and Eduardo (Lalo) Navarro and consisted of four legs sampling the country from south to north. Our latitude spanned a staggering 35 degrees, from 53.6 to 18.3 degrees south, covering about the same range as […]
Central Amazonia
From Sept. 9 – 26 we traveled to central Amazonia with Field Guides, Inc. The trip, led by the remarkable team of Bret Whitney and Marcelo Barreiros, was based from Manaus, located close to the most biogeographically important crossroads in the entire Amazon: the confluence of the Amazon River and its largest tributary, the Rio […]
California to Colorado … via Washington
Since hitting the road after our birding tour to Borneo, it’s been somewhat hectic, as our target plant genera have been rather widely spaced, and so we have been racking up the miles. In our post-retirement 2017 – 2022 road trips, we averaged 75 – 100 miles per day, and in the first two months […]
Borneo!
We spent the three-week period from June 17 to July 8 traveling to, in, and back from Sabah, Malaysia, on the northeast portion of Borneo. This is the third largest island in the world, after Greenland and New Guinea. It has the most diverse forests outside Amazonia, and in addition to being a fine birding […]
Great Basin Searches
We left the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on May 31 and spent most of the day driving to reach the Calcareous Mountains district of eastern Nevada. This is part of the basin and range topography that characterizes much of the Great Basin. We reached our target area around dinnertime but while driving over […]